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Jewish Lapidarium

Jewish Lapidarium

One of the most important Vatican collections of ancient inscriptions is that of the Jewish Lapidarium, which was transferred from the Lateran Palace to the Vatican in 1963 along with the early Christian collections. It includes almost all the inscriptions (around two hundred) discovered during the excavation of the Jewish catacomb of Monteverde, on the Via Portuense. The catacomb, the existence of which is recorded from at least the seventeenth century onwards, was not systematically explored until the beginning of the twentieth century (1904-1906), following its chance rediscovery during excavation work; in 1914 the discoveries were displayed in a new room in the Lateran Apostolic Palace. The removal of the inscriptions from such a unique archaeological site, an act that nowadays would certainly be considered deplorable, instead turned out to be the salvation of this epigraphic patrimony, as a few years later the catacomb collapsed irreparably due to landslides and quarrying, and all trace of it was lost. Only in very recent years have fortuitous discoveries of small underground rooms and burial sites during works in the area of Via Vincenzo Monti offered the opportunity for a comprehensive re-examination of the archive documentation, enabling the precise location of the lost catacomb to be identified. The collection, along with a few other sporadic findings (such as the capitals of the synagogue at the ancient Portus), constitutes the most valuable and homogeneous group of Jewish inscriptions of the diaspora and a veritable mine of information on the Roman Jewish community between the third and fourth centuries A.D., relating to, for example, the spoken language (mostly Greek), social and religious life, including ceremonies and cultual rites evoked by many symbols present on the stones, such as the menorāh, or seven-branched candelabrum, and the lulāv, or palm branch), as well as the names of people and family relationships.